I consider Otto one of my friends. He’s a guy I don’t mind hanging out with in a bar for hours. His code advice (and debugging advice) has furthered my career. He’s also one of the more realistic folks out there when it comes to work/life balance. Enjoy your beers, bro. So you can guess my surprise when, a couple years ago, he lamented to me about his plugin, PHP Code Widget, and how he wished everyone would quit using it. “I use it.” I replied, and earned an Otto-Grumpy Cat glare. “Don’t.”
Further conversations illuminated the situation. The code works, but it’s not great since people can use it to insert anything PHPish. Sure, in the wrong hands that is hella dangerous. I was about to broadly declare “I’m not the wrong hands!” when I thought back on everything I do, and where I do it, and I sheepishly replied, “I guess I’m just lazy.”
And that’s the crux. I am lazy, and I looked for the easier way to include a PHP file in my widget areas. I was using it to show ads (the ones you see all over this site) via include("/home/foo/public_html/blah.php");. Why? Because I use the same ads on multiple places. But that’s it for my PHP usage. Which means for me, replacing it with anything else is super easy!
Shortcodes
They work in widgets, so hey! I knew I just needed to include a specific PHP file from a specific location, so for me, this was pretty simple. Also it meant I could call a do_shortcode in other places in my theme functions to add it in.
// My Ads [myads name="name"]
function myads_func( $atts ) {
extract( shortcode_atts( array(
'name' => 'placeholder',
), $atts ) );
$filename = '/home/foo/public_html/ads/'.$name.'.php';
if ( !file_exists($filename) ) { return '<!-- Ad would go here, but you messed up! '.$filename.' not found -->'; }
ob_start();
include($filename);
$content = ob_get_clean();
return '<div id="'.$name.'">'.$content.'</div>';
}
add_shortcode( 'myads', 'myads_func' );
I put in the little fail check to be hidden, so I would know where to look. This obviously works well for me since I’m pretty limited in how I was using Otto’s code. Before this, though, I was also using it for some BuddyPress sidebar trickery which could not be done (easily) with shortcodes, and really nor should it be, so that brings us to number two…
Make Your Own Widget
Widget code is … weird. It’s not as easy as a function, and it’s way the heck larger than shortcode code, for many things. But you should remember that better or worse is subjective, I know, but for me it wasn’t worth the time to do it. It takes me way longer to master widget code, which I can’t use everywhere (in post content, in footers etc). But Otto’s general advice has been to make a widget.
It’s also probably way safer than doing an include like I am, but when I started needing the shortcode all over the place, that’s what it was.
I said this on Twitter: If your site breaks every time you update WordPress, it’s time for a theme and plugin audit.
I’m using 
Back eons ago, WPTavern solved this with a function, and like all great sites documented it! The problem?